Date: Sat, 03 Mar 2012 09:25:46 -0700 From: Ian Lepore <freebsd@damnhippie.dyndns.org> To: H <hm@hm.net.br> Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: flowtable usable or not Message-ID: <1330791946.10695.51.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> In-Reply-To: <4F51BDDA.3020602@hm.net.br> References: <20120221143537.Horde.deyFDZjmRSRPQ52pxBIpnLA@webmail.leidinger.net> <BA7FFA2D-DEE6-4FB7-AE26-0BC79CBFD8C0@lists.zabbadoz.net> <4F4BA707.5070608@wasikowski.net> <4F4C3FE7.3040802@FreeBSD.org> <CACqU3MWx3pMMDncvOita-OAgfe=NPKtwKE2WeB_mdcYwozY81Q@mail.gmail.com> <4F4D51CB.2010508@FreeBSD.org> <4F4D5E5D.9040302@FreeBSD.org> <4F4DD288.5060106@FreeBSD.org> <CAHM0Q_O%2BCt6yhRL=B9oxgkL8EgLxZdo7-KFO2C8HqiN1=Kx_bw@mail.gmail.com> <4F4ED889.2070608@FreeBSD.org> <4F500BB9.4040307@FreeBSD.org> <CAHM0Q_OfeB7Kb=pgjGq0uffLJdJROGoCaGz=25Jito-kweAxRQ@mail.gmail.com> <4F5088CA.1090108@FreeBSD.org> <CAHM0Q_MZM6Gn_zPzxz5tLuzPOW=kK9YxqmrLTyitvGfAPhrkbw@mail.gmail.com> <4F510FBD.50008@FreeBSD.org> <4F513B2D.6010809@FreeBSD.org> <4F5148A7.4080408@FreeBSD.org> <4F51BDDA.3020602@hm.net.br>
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On Sat, 2012-03-03 at 03:44 -0300, H wrote:
> Doug Barton wrote:
> > Just looking at the committers, of which we have over 300, only a
> > couple dozen at most have ever identified as actually using FreeBSD as
> > a desktop at my count. Taking the larger development community into
> > account I think the numbers are a little better, but not much. Sure,
> > our strength is servers, and that is not going to change.
> eventually that could be a good starting point, good question is, why not?
>
> > But how many real-life bugs have I personally uncovered in -current as
> > a result of actually running it (mostly) daily? I'm not the only one,
> > certainly, but if the numbers were flipped and the vast majority of
> > our developers *did* use FreeBSD routinely, how much better off would
> > we be?
> again, why?
>
> let's face some reality. Forever installing FreeBSD Desktop, either KDE
> or Gnome, was a nightmare process, or better, to make it appear on
> screen was a nightmare.
>
> Even if somebody got all packages into his system (by miracle?), it
> still did not popped up. Without some special knowledge _no_chance_.
>
> who knows, the guys who created and battled on area51 knew why they
> chose this name :)
>
> Still now, kde4, hours of install, missing packages, compiling and still
> nothing, somewhere over the process, flies over the screen please set
> kdm4_enable="YES" ... I guess that will not be noticed by any user
>
> Even if some smart guy figures out that he needs xorg-server, the port
> or package do not select all it needs for running, its own drivers and
> so. How a user should know that? There is a windeco which installs
> hundreds of deps, even sound what do not work on FreeBSD, but xorg do
> not have deps for its functionality? goooood ... ohhh I forgot, that has
> nothing to do with the desktop itself , sorry for mentioning ...
>
> Anybody can tell how somebody can find all this out? Don't say by
> reading because we need to look at the real facts and that is nobody
> want to read, they want a desktop nothing else, something silly and easy
> to read email and write docs and surf on the net, listen to a CD, they
> need to put a cd into the drive, running install process, reboot, using,
> nothing else and such a thing ... we do not have
>
> so where this potential users should come from? Only from heaven ...
> > And before anyone bothers to point it out, yes, I happen to be using
> > Windows at this exact moment. I have some layer 9 work to get done and
> > I need tools that are only available to me in Windows (more's the
> > pity). The sad thing is, judging by the activity on the -ports@ list,
> > the traffic in #bsdports, and just talking to/interacting with FreeBSD
> > users, a lot of *them* are not only interested in FreeBSD as a desktop
> > OS, they are actually doing it.
>
> IMO the weakest point is that we do not have the packages ready.
>
> Even if lots of you do not like it to hear, fact is that we must look
> around and see how others do it. Windows, whatever it is, it is easy to
> install for everybody.
>
> Same for Fedora, in order to stay with a Unix system, package handling,
> update with YUM on Fedora hardly fails.
>
> ALL packages are compiled, you never need to compile anything. Even if
> you need 800MB of packages, yum picks them all, installs them all, and
> all is fine up top date. Such a process is where we need to get
> orientation from.
>
> If it was my decision, it should be go to ports=no_no, packages=YES
>
> I mean, as long as the packages are not complete and ready, no new port
> version should be released or announced
>
> So who dares,understand and can or like adventures, compiles from ports
>
> Such a decision would help FreeBSD in all means and would help the users
> as well, in any case it will create more users
>
> Why somebody should chose FreeBSD as his daily desktop, oh man, only
> some die-hard-guys like you and me, but you know, that is not hours of
> work, that is days, weeks and constant setbacks for whatever reasons ...
> that is not for anybody. And you are right, no traffic on the specific
> lists, why? because the three on the list, two can help themselves (you
> and me) and the other is the moderator ... :) not even the port
> maintainer/packager is on that list ... :)
>
> ps. the last statement might be exaggerated and might not be valid in
> all cases, so please do not shoot
>
>
When the announcement of the 8.3-BETA1 release was made on these lists I
had just finished building a new machine to become my everyday desktop
machine for code development. I figured I should download and install
using the new beta to help test the release. I was disappointed to find
that the packages weren't on the beta dvd ISO, so the test wasn't as
complete as I was hoping in terms of being similar to what a new user
would experience.
I ran through the sysinstall process without any glitches and rebooted
to a working text-mode system. Then I did, from my notes:
pkg_add -r for the following:
sudo
rsync
xorg-server
xorg-drivers
gnome2
nautilus-open-terminal
firefox
libreoffice
emacs
subversion
mercurial
There wasn't a single hitch during any of that. I did eventually
discover that I had to enable the snd_hda driver to eliminate spewage of
warning messages in the log from pulseaudio. This is annoying, but I
had exactly the same problem with Fedora a couple years ago when I was
using it as a desktop (it's okay to assume that most desktop users want
better sound than a 1982-style beep; it's rude to require it).
Assuming that the usual packages will be on the final release image, I'd
have to say that anyone can successfully install and configure FreeBSD
as a desktop machine without being a power user. It all just works, at
least for 8.3. That hasn't always been the case in the past, and if you
need to update a specific component or two after initial install I think
it is likely to be way harder in FreeBSD with ports and packages than it
is in a distro such as Fedora that uses yum.
So turning brand new virgin hardware into a usable desktop system for
everyday code development using a recent release from a mature branch
took a couple hours (mostly package download time) and a handful of
commands. On a non-beta release I think the time would have been much
shorter, and the commands would have been reduced to checking a few
boxes in the package browser part of sysinstall.
I'm not sure whether it would go so well on 9.0, but it isn't yet a
mature branch -- IMO, if you want to live on the leading edge you should
expect to do a bit more work. I would expect that by time 9.1 comes out
the process should be about as smooth as it was for 8.3.
-- Ian
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